Our February tastings took us to Australia, with a comprehensive tour covering all the key states where wine is made, and many of the most iconic styles.
Tasmania is justly famed for its sparkling wine, and the well known producer Arras kicked us off with a Chardonnay/Pinot Noir/Meunier blend. Quite light in style, but with some nice autolytic character, a pleasant aperitif wine. The next wine, unsurprisingly, polarised the room. It really does seem that some people love Riesling and some hate it, but everyone agreed the ‘Julius’ from the amazing Henschke Estate’s Eden Valley vineyards was high quality, and demonstrated the freshness and searing acidity that this cool region, right next door to the boiling Barossa Valley is famed for.
Due east, more or less, from the Barossa, across some mountain ranges and a few hundred miles, is Central Victoria and the famous Tahblik winery. Their ‘Tower’ Marsanne was a super example of the grape variety, generally found in blends in the Rhone Valley, and of course Tahblik is known for having the oldest Marsanne vines in the world (160 years). We weren’t sure it the ‘Tower’ Marsanne was from these vines, given it very reasonable price point, but it was a nice example of ripe fruit, rounded mouthfeel and a lovely finish.
Our final white was a Margaret River Chardonnay, from Western Australia, very much made in a Burgundy Style. The Treeton Nocturne is a lovely wine, with ripe fruit, beautifully integrated oak and super freshness.
Our reds demonstrated that there is far more to Australia than big robust reds (but also that they make that style very well). A Pinot Noir from Yarra Valley in Victoria, and a Shiraz from the Hunter Valley both showed great elegance and finesse, and weren’t too heavy on the alcohol. Our next wine took us into richer territory with a degree or so more alcohol. The Coonawarra region of South Australia (about as south as you can get), is famed for is terrarosa soils and maritime influences, and is felt to produce a very Bordeaux style of red wine. The Balnaves Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot blend showed lovely fruit, ripe fine tannins and a definite sense of black currant, green pepper and eucalyptus.
The Duval Plexus is a ‘GSM’ blend: Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvèdre (sometimes called Mataro in Australia). It was a great example, with intense black and red fruits, soft tannins and a big mouthfeel. At Teddington and one of the Richmond evenings we contrasted it with Torbreck’s ‘The Steading’, also from the Barossa Valley, which showed more complexity perhaps because of a larger component of Grenache in the blend.
Fliss and Tim double-headed Teddington, with Tabby serving up a Cook cottage pie, while at Richmond we enjoyed home-cooked fayre on Sunday and the Britannia spoiled us on Monday with a crab tart and perfectly cooked steak and chips!
Details of what we drank are on our Wines we have tasted page.
